Link Love (2015-09-26)

Thought-provoking

“There are no easy solutions: this is the world we live in, and he needs to learn to live in it. We’re walking the line between trying to shield him appropriately, as we can, without being overprotective. We’re teaching and enforcing personal boundaries. We’re teaching him to self-monitor; our goal is to help him become more resilient.
It’s not easy.
Through it all, we’re emphasizing the perks of sensitivity, and I’m telling him all the time how I understand because I’m the same way. HSPs are gentle and compassionate, they’re natural peacemakers, they’re responsible and intuitive. They are creative, ingeniously so. They feel emotions more deeply, and while this sometimes feels like a curse, it can be a huge blessing.” From the trenches of parenting a highly sensitive child – Modern Mrs Darcy

“For over thirty years we’ve treated something as fact which is actually false. Economists we trusted to know better, didn’t, and so people have suffered and continue to suffer. This pernicious economic myth is the idea that a rising yacht lifts all tides, or as more popularly described, “trickle-down economics.” If we are to start running our economy in a way we could one day describe as notably less insane, we must finally come to see it for what it actually is.” Trickle-Down Economics Must Die, Long Live Grow-Up Economics – Basic Income – Medium

Equality

“When Obama began his first campaign for the presidency, Coates was all but anonymous, a journalist in his early 30s who had worked mostly at alt-weeklies and mostly for short stints. But in 2008, he was hired by The Atlantic — to write longer pieces, then to blog — and eventually his commentary formed a counterpoint to the White House line. Against the optimism of the Obama ascendancy, Coates offered a bleaker view: that no postracial era was imminent, that white supremacy has been a condition of the United States since its inception and that it might always be. “ ‘White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies,” Coates writes to his son. While the president talked about the velocity of our escape from history, Coates insisted that the country was still stuck in its vise. Last year, he wrote an Atlanticcover story titled “The Case for Reparations,” probably the most discussed magazine piece of the Obama era, which detailed the persistence of structural racism — racism by government policy — into the present day. When Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and then Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Walter Scott in South Carolina, it was Coates who seemed to most adeptly digest the central paradox of the time: how, within an increasingly progressive era, a country led by a black president could still act with such racial brutality. In late December, when Funny or Die published a fake text-message chain between the president and his daughters, it had its fictional, radicalized Malia Obama coolly insisting, “I wish Ta-Nehisi Coates was my dad.”” The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates – NY Mag

Beauty & Body Image

“And even after you’ve made tremendous strides, even after you feel that you’ve done the brunt of the work, even after you know that you’ve drastically improved your self-image, you will still struggle. Do not expect to love yourself completely and wholly every day of your life. It may sound like a worthy goal, but it’s actually a trap. Because if you hold yourself to that standard – the standard of consistent, unwavering, holistic self-love – you are quite likely to fail. And when you catch yourself wishing your upper lip was less hairy or your thighs a bit slimmer, you may feel guilt or shame. Since the goal of striving for self-love is to abandon guilt and shame, this is counterproductive. You will have tough days, moments of frustration with your body and inner self. You will doubt.” Self-Love Fluctuations – Already Pretty

Chronic Illness & Pain

“It took me a long time to accept during my period of illness that the magic of every day was in the little things- the things that some healthier people maybe took for granted. But whether you have CFS or not, there is knowledge and wisdom to be had celebrating the small things.” Celebrating the Small Things – Conquering Fear Spiritually

Health

“I’m a huge proponent of self-experimentation. We can’t always rely on funding for research relevant to our needs, interests, and desires, and those studies that are relevant are still using participants that are not us. We like control, when it comes down to it. We want to be the arbiters of our own destinies, and running (formal or informal) self-experiments of 1 can help us get to that point. But as helpful as it can be, there are both inherent limits to self-experimentation and common pitfalls people fail to take into account when designing their experiments of one.” The Pitfalls and Limitations of Self-Experimentation – Mark’s Daily Apple

“Too little sunshine can kill you, a leading researcher has claimed.
Richard Weller, an Edinburgh University dermatologist, says that far from being something to be scared of, regular exposure to the sun is good for us.
His research suggests it lowers blood pressure – and so cuts the risk of potentially deadly heart attacks and strokes.
And with other studies showing people with the most common form of skin cancer actually live longer than the average person, he says that those being diagnosed with the disease should be ‘congratulated’.” Dermatologist Richard Weller of Edinburgh University claims sunbathing is good for us – Daily Mail

“That’s because your skin—all 21 square feet of it—isn’t just the largest organ in your body. It’s also the canary in the coalmine for your digestive health. Skin conditions like acne, rosacea, and eczema are often a sign that something serious is going on deep within your gut. Robin Nielsen, a certified integrative nutritionist in Capitola, California, suggests the most effective way to improve your skin is to tackle it from the inside-out, which has the added benefit of improving your overall health.” For Healthier Skin, Check Your Gut, Not Your Bathroom Cabinet – GOOD

Foodie

“The classic Philadelphia Fish House Punch, first imbibed in the early 1700s, was often diluted with tea. In his book Punch, liquor historian David Wondrich writes that the recipe for Regent’s Punch, dating to 1815, also packed quite the potent wallop: Not only did it call for green tea and arrack, a rumlike liquor from South Asia, it also threw in citrus juice, sugar, champagne, brandy and rum. No wonder, then, that one early drinker described the Regent’s as imparting a “mad, delirious dizziness,” as Wondrich writes. Overall, these strong, early punches had little in common with the light, fruity sippers served today.” As American as Iced Tea: A Brief, Sometimes Boozy History – The Salt – NPR